Early Thursday Entry at Pickathon

I’ve been hearing about Pickathon for a while now. This summer was the 20^th iteration of the festival in the woods outside of Portland. Over the years the festival has grown into an eclectic lineup that includes rap, punk, electronic and indie draped over its bluegrass spine. This year the festival ran from Friday, August 3 to Sunday, August 5. This was my first Pickathon, and as I always do, I went all in on the festival experience. That includes showing up for Early Thursday Entry. It was a good thing I did.

Early Entry

Even though the festival doesn’t officially start until Friday, camping is first-come, first-served. That’s reason enough for a lot of people to pony up for the Early Thursday Entry Ticket that lets you check in for the festival at noon on Thursday. I decided to go for Early Thursday because I was nervous about how the camping would work, and because the limited line up of bands on Thursday consisted entirely of ones I wanted to see.

I arrived at the Pendarvis Farm in Happy Valley, Oregon a little after 1 p.m. on Thursday, and it was already a madhouse. No more than check in at any other camping festival, but since I was navigating it with kids and without spouse, my blood pressure rose a bit trying to figure out where I was supposed to go and what to do. Once I followed directions to a parking space, the kids and I grabbed our backpacks and entered the grounds, looking for a campsite. I had an idea where I wanted to stay based on the map I carefully studied before leaving home; the camp host at the front gate recommended a different area. It felt like the campground was already filling up, and I was a bit panicky about finding a spot. Unlike Doe Bay, the tent sites are unmarked – you find a place that looks flat enough for your tent and claim it by dropping your stuff there.

Setting Up Camp

I immediately got lost on the trails crisscrossing the woods. It seemed like tents were everywhere, and nothing looked like an open tent site and I totally started to panic. I’ve been reading the Hunger Games to my younger daughter and looking for a campsite was starting to feel a little like the Cornucopia at the opening of the games. We threw our stuff down on the first semi-flat surface we saw. While we set up our tent, random strangers walking by commented, “Nice spot!” Were they making fun of me? Or were they serious?

Reader, they were serious. I was about 20 feet outside of the Woods stage – a festival favorite, both for its aesthetic and for its programming. We were close to water and toilets and had perfect sound quality from our sleeping bags all weekend. People arriving on Friday would never get a spot like this.

By about 3 p.m. we had our camp all set up and made our way to the Treeline Stage for an afternoon of music. Since most people don’t arrive until Friday, these early Thursday concerts are much less crowded and more intimate than the rest of the weekend.

Alela Diane

I never know how to write about artists like Alela Diane without sounding dismissive. I guess she normally plays with a full band, but this set was lyrical songs sung by a girl with a guitar. That describes so many people and doesn’t sound very original at all. But words don’t always do reality justice.

Alela Diane’s set was not twee or crunchy. Her songs were folky, of-the-people stuff rather than college poet confessional. Her voice was strong yet silky smooth. After the hunt for a campsite, Alela Diane hit the reset button. Sweat dried, heart rates dropped, and we settled into the peaceful, easy feeling of a festival weekend.

Dopey’s Robe

The name sounds like a stoner doom band, but they’re actually a somewhat surfey psych rock outfit with a visual aesthetic that evokes Kids on the Slope, the period anime about jazz. Dopey’s Robe would be right at home on the Freakout label – their sound was sort of Acid Tongue meets Earth. They had steel guitar and flute (I am such a sucker for a flute solo).

When the guitar player broke two strings, the drummer broke the artsy vibe by carrying a pitcher of beer to the mic and telling a drummer IQ joke. I’ve forgotten the joke now, but the punchline involved drool. Later he restored their prog-rock cred with a spoken word poem.

Frazey Ford

One of the reasons I came to Pickathon, Frazey Ford and the Quiet Revolution was up next. Ugh. She’s just so cool. You can totally imagine her baking brownies for the PTA, but she still looks almost bored taking the stage in a floor length gold sequined skirt and turquoise Parliament tank top. Frazey thy name is steaze.

Seriously, I can’t even write about her set, because when I write about a band, I listen to their music. And I can’t hold still to type when I’m listening to Frazey Ford. I’ll just say she opened with the warrior song “Natural Law,” and closed with the song “Indian Ocean,” which felt exactly like sitting on the beach at Auroville, staring at the Indian Ocean under a full moon. And I knew I could handle four nights of festival camping alone with kids.

Tinariwen

Before the festival, I made my kids study the lineup and make a list of the bands they wanted to see. My 9-year-old picked Tinariwen, so we moved to the Mt. Hood mainstage for their bedtime (9 p.m.) set. She doesn’t know about the Tuareg rebellion and civil war in Mali. Nor does she know that the men of Tinariwen are freedom fighters who have chosen to exchange guns for guitars, who have been targeted by religious extremists for the choice. She doesn’t know that their guitar-driven desert blues feels so familiar because American blues shares a common ancestor in the West African assouf style of music, making it proof of the interconnections between cultures and the significance of African-Americans in establishing the arts and musical tradition in this country.

Someday, if she continues to listen to this music (and why wouldn’t she?) she will learn these things. For now, she only knows that she digs it – a lot. On the drive home Monday morning, she listed Tinariwen’s set as a high point of the whole weekend. Early Thursday Entry was a really good idea.

{Disclosures: I attended Pickathon courtesy of the festival. Most photos in this post were provided by the festival. All opinions and photos of my tent, Frazey Ford, the empty Mt. Hood stage are my own.}